Day: September 21, 2026

New York fell 3-2 to the New Jersey Devils in their first preseason game of the season. Goals by Anton Blidh and Drew Fortescue were not enough, as Dylan Garand stopped 28 of 31 shots faced in the losing effort. It was a decent team effort though, backstopped by a strong performance in net.

You could be forgiven for thinking that the Wolf Pack had shown up to play the Devils tonight. Mike Sullivan dressed a very inexperienced side to face a strong Devils line-up at the Prudential Center Monday night. When Juuso Parssinen and Matt Rempe are two of your most experienced forwards, you know it’s going to be a questionable line-up.

The Rangers get their 2026-27 Preseason schedule under way tonight in New Jersey – 7:00pm EST. It’ll mark the first of four games in the abbreviated schedule that will be the norm going forward. There’s also a number of new restrictions on the number of players who can play more than two games as detailed here.

It has also been typical to see relatively inexperienced line-ups start off on the road, and that tradition along with those new constraints is a big reason why we’ll see a pretty inexperienced side hit the ice tonight in Newark.